While we're still off on our short annual break there are a few developments I thought it prudent to keep you abreast of. 

USB 3.0 is gathering more momentum and the press releases from various manufacturers are coming through thick and fast. A massive range of different devices which exploit the speed of the USB 3.0 interface are being announced for availability soon.

Mostly, they're mass storage devices with limited applications. Some of them are kind of cool - such as smallish SSD RAID and similar devices. Speed, stability, reasonable data integrity potential and a heap of possible applications in the professional IT services sector, but prohibitively expensive for the most part. 

The BIG stumbling block for USB 3.0 for the moment is the relatively high cost of interface cards (HBA) and reliance on third party drivers owing to the lack of solid support from Microsoft, Apple and the major Linux distros. If you've been an early adopter of external devices or new I/O technologies in the past, you will doubtless recall the lack of stability in a percentage of your site or installs, leading to much user frustration and increased costs. As soon as these two issues are resolved, there will be a fabulous place for these fast devices for professional IT or business users. 

Consumers, on the other hand will still be waiting a while. So far, we're unaware of announcements of USB 3.0 enabled video cameras or other relevant devices. For small portable devices such as audio players and the like, there would of course be the speed advantage but also the disadvantage of somewhat increased power consumption (depending on the implementation of the chipset) as well as increased cost.

Our recommendation? Unless you have a bottomless budget and burning desire to be uber-1337, wait a month or three and review your options again. 

Cheers - Virgil. 

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